Zara Kesterton

I am a second-year PhD candidate, supervised by Professor Ulinka Rublack and funded by the Wolfson Foundation. My thesis explores representations of nature in eighteenth-century French fashion. I have a particular interest in the production and consumption of artificial flowers in early modern Europe.

My research investigates how consumers and producers engaged with ideas about the natural world, especially new advances in botany, through their clothing. I consider how fashion both reflected and stimulated knowledge exchange in Enlightenment France. I am also interested in the ways in which natural motifs in clothing interacted with the sensory body. I plan to undertake reconstructions of real and artificial flowers in clothing to understand more about the visual, olfactory, and tactile nature of floral accessories worn on the body.

I hold an MLitt degree in Dress and Textile Histories from the University of Glasgow (2022), an MPhil degree in Early Modern History from the University of Cambridge (2020), and a BA (Hons) in English Literature and History from the University of Durham (2019).

Here in Cambridge, I am currently serving as the administrative co-ordinator for the HSS funded project, the Material Culture Forum. I also work with Amelia Hutchinson to co-convene the Material Culture postgraduate workshop. Alongside Susannah Lyon-Whaley (Auckland) and Tori Champion (St Andrew's), I run the international Women and Flowers Research Network.

I am committed to teaching and public engagement. I currently supervise and lecture final-year undergraduates on Paper 14: Material Culture in the Early Modern World. I held the position of editor-in-chief for the blog Doing History in Public in 2022–23. I have also taught English as a foreign language in France, and have worked as a tour guide at Hever Castle and Durham Castle. During the pandemic I worked as an archival research assistant for several academics based in Australia and New Zealand, including Dr Sarah Bendall.